It’s been interesting reading the takeaways from UKREiiF this year. This one caught my attention – in the last 20 years, circa 1.4m homes that have planning permission have not been built.
The resulting question is whether planning permissions should follow the landowner and not the land to ensure delivery. Why they haven’t come forward must surely be the place to start the conversation.
At Barker Parry, we’ve seen planning permissions obtained and then the existing use becoming viable again so the planning permission is never implemented.
Other reasons have been landowners asking for too much money so the scheme becomes unviable, the sites becoming too challenging to deliver and make a profit, land banking and sites bound by unimplemented option agreements.
Alternatively, perhaps those homes haven’t been built because a different scheme under a separate planning permission has been delivered. As always in planning the devil is in the detail!
The Planning Reform Working Paper: Speeding Up Build Out published on Sunday attempts to address this point. It identifies 3 key areas; land banking, delayed or stuck sites and slow build out.
The proposed measures relate to transparency and accountability, mixed tenure thresholds, CPO powers and a Delayed Homes Penalty.
The transparency and accountability measures proposed make for interesting reading. The proposals suggest the following:
- Submission and approval of a build-out programme, to be agreed prior to the determination of any planning application,
- Issue of a commencement notice, and
- Annual development reports submitted to the LPA to report progress.
We also have a further reiteration of Section 113 of LURA and a proposal to implement the new power of declining to determine applications “made by persons who applied for, or who are connected to, an earlier planning permission for the development of land in the LPA’s area which has not been built out at a reasonable rate.”
(The Planning Reform Working Paper: Speeding Up Build Out)
Further, the empowerment of Section 112 would allow LPAs to issue completion notices. The use it or lose it power!
We question what difference these powers will make, while adding more paperwork, appeals or legal challenges to an already full LPA case load.
Additionally, delays in decision making while the parties seek to agree what is a reasonable programme, and disputes over what is classed as a reasonable delay may affect the progress of the development.
It also begs the question of how land promoters fit into this proposal. Many promote large strategic sites that will ultimately have multiple developers bringing forward parcels of development. Experience has shown that some applications have proposed unrealistic timeframes for the delivery of a site, failing to have regard to marketing, site disposal and reserved matters formulated and submitted.
This can lead to an LPA sometimes responding by reducing the time limit for either commencement of development or the submission of reserved matters applications, to the point that they are almost impossible to achieve.
This perfect storm can lead to failure before the developers have even started.
The proposals also fail to address the issue that many of the delays are causes by hold-ups in the decision-making process by LPAs, whether it be a s73, conditions, NMAs.
The paper acknowledges that there are systemic issues with the processing of applications, but until this is dealt with holistically, everything else is just additional bureaucracy adding to the LPA’s workload or giving justification for further delays. Sticking plasters are not the answer.
What are your thoughts on the proposed changes, will they work, or what is the alternative?
